Like you, I’m following what’s happening around us. I’ve been creative, but I can’t pretend everything is normal … and I won’t dare suggest we return to what was.
I recently thought of something I wrote for BLOOD – which just barely touched the edges of all this – so I’ll leave it here in place of what I’d say, and do before the racism hit the fan (and it’s been flying toward us for decades):
it shouldn’t surprise me that when you upset someone they’ll assert their world repeat their understanding often in anger because you’ve pulled them out of a warm place and they want back in - it’s like covering you in a cold but familiar blanket they’ve carried with them for life you’re no longer animal, beautiful, desired – just the shape of a person no detail – except for what they imagined you’ve upset the loose footing they’ve kept every muscle trembling constricted, taut like when the safety guard has failed on the carnival ride and the adult’s grip is slipping
it’s strange how fear travels flows out from it wherever it lands like the fool who loosens a radiator cap too soon fearing the steam and hot fluid instead of his own hand that I should be reviled as though something in my wounds could escape spray out – and injure the world afraid of what may return travel along sightlines long buried by a culture where violence travels down one way streets as though blood might destroy them the way the injury destroyed you
Tyler Pennock 
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